Capturing and Deploying a System Image In Windows 7 Part 3: Creating the Bootable Windows PE Media.

So, in part 2 we created our reference installation, now we need to create the bootable Windows PE disk, which is the Windows Pre-installed Environment. You need to do this on your technician computer.
This disk allows you to start a computer for recovery and deployment purposes. Windows PE RAM boots straight into the memory, so once the computer has booted you can remove the media.
Once you have booted into the Windows PE disk you can use the ImageX tool to capture, modify and apply disk images.
To create the bootable Windows PE disk you use the copype.cmd command.

On your technician computer, click Start, select All Programs > Windows AIK and find Deployment Tools Command Prompt.

You need to right click on Deployment Tools Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator. You will need to click yes in the UAC.

The command prompt window will open. The environment variables will already be set to point to all of the necessary tools.
In the command prompt you need to type "copype.cmd <architecture> <destination>" where architecture is either x86 or amd64, depending on your processor, and the destination is where you would like to copy to. This will create the directory structure and copy the necessary files for the architecture you have selected.

Now you need to copy the winpe.wim file. This is the file that will be used to boot the disk. It needs to be copied into the ISO folder of the directory you have just created. If you're using a 64bit processor the folder will just be called winpe and the file will be called winpe.wim.  I hit the enter button to put this at the bottom to make it easier to look at, but I'm not really sure how successful that really was.

You now need to copy ImageX into \winpe_x86\ISO. Again this would be \winpe\ISO if you are using 64bit, and the folder you are copying from will be c:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64\imagex.exe.

You now need to create the Windows PE ISO. You do this using the Oscdimg tool. The command is all one string, but I couldn't widen the window to display it all on one line! (just winpe if you are using a 64bit system)

When it is finished you should see this:

You now need to burn the iso to a disk. Windows 7 has disk burning software built in, so you need to navigate to where you have stored your iso, in this case it is c:\winpe_x86\winpe_x86.iso, right click and select burn disk image (ensure that you have a blank DVD-R or DVD-RW in your optical drive).

You need to click Burn and then the disk burning will start. Make sure that you write a label on the disk so that you know what it is.

You are now ready to capture the system image.